San Diegan tells of Kenyan mall attack

With armed terrorists feet away, Elaine Dang hid under a table at an upscale mall in Nairobi, pretending she was dead while preparing to die.

Around her was chaos and carnage — bodies of men, women and children shot by Islamist extremists who had stormed the mall, popular with affluent Kenyans and expatriates.

When the four-day siege by the militants with ties to al-Shabab was over, more than 60 people had been killed, including two of Dang’s friends. Dozens more were injured.

Dang, 26, a Torrey Pines High School graduate, endured one hour and 11 minutes of terror before she was able to escape, wounded and bloodied. Released from a Kenyan hospital, she is back in Del Mar with her family.

In her first interview since returning to the United States, she told how her love for her family gave her the courage, strength and will to survive as she lay seriously injured.

“I thought, ‘Wait, this can’t be it,’” she said. “I had to make it out of there. I had to find a way. I knew for my family, that would kill them” if she died, she said.

It was Sept. 21, a Saturday, a day when the 80 businesses at the five-story mall were packed with shoppers, moviegoers and restaurant patrons.

As general manager for EatOut Kenya, the country’s online restaurant guide and reservation service, the UC Berkeley graduate was one of four judges for a children’s cooking competition being held on the roof of the center’s parking structure. Dozens of people had gathered.

At 12:37 p.m. — she knows the exact time because she had called a friend on her cellphone — she heard booms and saw people running from the mall.

Her first instinct was to flee, but her fellow judges thought everything was OK. No one knew the mall was under siege. “I was still trying to figure out what was happening,” she said.

They heard more booms that turned out to be gunfire and grenades. People around her began dropping to the ground. She hid behind a kitchen counter.

“There were people piling on top of me,” she said. Her phone was jolted from her hand. The woman next to her was bleeding. She told Dang, “I’ve been shot.”

She saw two men and a rifle. “Their faces had no emotion,” she said. They allowed two women “in Muslim attire” to flee, and spoke on phones in a language she did not recognize.

“That is when I figured out that it had to do with extremism and a terrorist attack,” she said.

More bullets flew. A gas canister set up for cooking was struck. The explosion ripped pieces of flesh from Dang’s arm. Her legs, chest and forehead were struck by shrapnel. Glass flew into her right eye.

She did not think she would survive. She thought of her mother, father and older sister in Del Mar, and her younger brother, a student at UCLA.

“While preparing for death, I still had the love of my siblings and parents to keep me motivated to survive,” she said.

She thought that if she was motionless, the attackers would think they had killed her. “I was laying there, pretending to be dead,” she said. She had her face to the assailants, fearing she would be paralyzed if bullets struck her back.

Gradually, in the distance, she heard the welcome wail of sirens. The shooting ceased, as did the men’s voices.

“I pulled myself under a table,” she said. “There were a lot of people there. I just laid there.”

At one point, the silence was broken by the voice of a man in civilian clothes. She thought he was American. He was telling people “let’s go, let’s go.” A few people left with him. She then heard two men speaking in an accent she did not recognize. About 20 people left with them.

She made a run for her phone. “I saw a lot of dead bodies,” she said. One of those killed was a young girl from the competition. A man who had been next to Dang behind the counter also was dead.

She made her way to a coffee shop inside the mall where others had also taken refuge. After a while, she checked a back door and found it led to a fire escape. She climbed down to a loading dock and began running from the mall, not knowing if the attackers were near.

“When I saw the (news) photographers, I knew I was in a safe spot,” she said.

The image of Dang — bloodied, bruised and dazed — being led to safety was sent by news agencies to media outlets around the world.

Dang later sent a picture from her Twitter account from the hospital where she had surgery to remove shrapnel.

Ironically, her mother, a hairdresser, was at work at a University City mall when her sister, Mary Dang, got word of the Nairobi siege and learned that her sister was OK. She went to the mall to tell her.

Mary and her boyfriend later flew to Kenya to be with her sister. The three returned Wednesday.

Dang said her focus now is healing physically and emotionally. She said she knows she will need counseling, and possibly more surgery. She does not have health insurance and funds have been set up to help her.

She is unsure if she will return to Kenya, where she moved in June 2012 and first worked with an education company setting up primary schools.

She wants people to know it is a wonderful country filled with good people. She hurts for those who did not survive, offering “my deepest condolences to the families and friends who lost their loved ones in this tragedy. I hope that everyone directly or indirectly impacted seeks out support as I will be,” she said.

As she makes that journey, the family she lived for will be at her side.